Of Brazen Brass and Emerald Fire
by FohkuKohgeki
Summary: A regular person gets Exalted in the process of being flung into the Whateley Academy universe. Self-insert. Rated M for safety.


_"If you don't like what you're doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove."_ - Timothy Leary

Sometimes, it's easier just to feel sorry for yourself and to stew in your own miserableness than it is to actually do anything about your problems. It's an easy trap to fall into, but even knowing that you're doing it and that you're not doing yourself any favors it can be hard to avoid. I guess that's just another excuse though, it would hardly be the first.

There I was, wandering the empty nighttime streets and fields of my crummy little home-town, stuck in a place I'd never really liked long after I thought I'd be gone. It would have been easy to blame other people or external circumstances for my problems, but really, I bore the ultimate responsibility for my woes. I was the one who'd slacked off, who'd taken the easy route, who'd let myself fall into useless depression and slovenly excess when everything had gone wrong, the one who'd damn near _killed_ myself...

I had to think about something else. Or maybe just nothing. I couldn't keep obsessing, it was years after the fact and I was still letting myself get dragged back down into that dark place inside me. No, thinking about nothing seemed like a good idea, so that's what I did. Empty my head, legs on autopilot, walk aimlessly down the same streets I'd known all my life, get into that zen place where my head finally goes quiet and do the best I could to enjoy the unseasonably warm winter night. It was better than flagellating myself constantly at least.

I began to notice something strange as I cut across the athletic fields behind the local high-school, a shortcut I'd been taking for as long as I could remember. It's hard to guess how long things had been building up imperceptibly before I started picking up on it, zoned out as I was, but as I squelched my way trough the muddy grass, stepping around the occasional puddle or heap of icy slush, I saw... things... flitting in and out of the darkness at the edge of perception. At first I was sure it was simple imagination and tried to ignore it, however the frequency of the apparitions only increased, the shadows seeming to come to writhing life around me. At this point I thought I was having a flashback or a psychotic break, payment for some of my past indulgences, and became understandably concerned.  
So I stood there, rooted in place in the middle of a soggy field, my tatty old sneakers squelching lightly in the mud as I shifted nervously back and forth, quietly freaking out at the unnerving display around me, sure I'd finally lost it. I can't say for the life of me how long I was frozen for, time has a way of stretching oddly in moments like that and I wasn't exactly looking at a clock, but eventually I began to snap out of my stupor as the tenor of the event changed around me. This was a subtle sort of change at first but once it began to change it rapidly built in pace and intensity. First, the air began to crackle and a low static hum made itself known, then eye watering glyphs shining with every color imaginable (often simultaneously) began scribing themselves out on the ground beneath my feet, organizing themselves into complex patterns and interweaving circles as more and more appeared, spreading farther and filling in every blank space in the areas they already occupied with a branching complexity, almost fractal in nature.

By now my fear had been subsumed by awe at the display unfurling before me and it was all I could do to to stare in awe at what could only be a vast magical circle laying itself out on the muddy ground beneath my feet. A small part of me was still screaming that this was madness and delusion, but it felt more real than anything ever had in my life before and I'd spent so many hours daydreaming about magic and high adventure that I couldn't help but want to believe that this was actually happening. Belatedly, it occurred to me that if this was real then standing in the middle of what was surely a massive spell mightn't be the best idea and I lifted my foot to start walking (where exactly didn't matter, as long as it got me out of the area of effect before something... irrevocable happened). Of course, that was the exact moment that the pattern seemed to 'lock' into its final configuration and flared into incandescent brilliance, robbing me of sight.

That was also when the pain started. Words can scarcely do what I felt justice, but I will attempt to convey the sensations anyway: electricity coursed down every nerve in my body, the breath froze in my lungs even as my veins flowed with liquid fire, a thousand razors flensed my skin, my flesh was softened by acid and giant hands roughly warped my body into a new shape before flash-freezing it into its new shape with liquid nitrogen. This wasn't happen sequentially either, I felt these and numerous other indescribably painful sensations all at once. Eventually I blacked out, wishing for nothing but death and certain that I would get it.

Consciousness returned to me slowly. The first thing I became aware of was a haunting melody, like nothing I'd ever heard in my life, coming from near by. It hit me on a deeply personal level, speaking of lost opportunities, missed friends and self recrimination but also streaked through with subtle phrases that evoked a faint hope that the bad days would pass and fond memories of the good times in life. Eventually a soft feminine voice with a subtle and unplaceable accent spoke to me, pitched just loud enough to be heard over the music.

"I can see that you are finally awake child. Open your eyes, we have much to discuss..."

Feeling faintly embarrassed and still afflicted with a throbbing ache in my bones and a vague sense of _wrongness_ about my body, no doubt remnants of my rough treatment earlier, I slowly cracked my eyes open, almost immediately blushing to the tips of my ears as I did. I was face to face with and inches away from a stunningly beautiful woman, well inside her personal space. Long, flowing dark hair in a loose, messy style framed a shapely face with large dark eyes that met my own, glittering with a faint hint of amusement. Slowly, I began to take in more details about the scene before me, noting the slightly alien cast to her features even as my eyes began to drift down, taking in more of her attractive body before widening in shock at the sight of her hands. They were like nothing I'd ever seen before, branching out into a multitude of many-jointed fingers and constantly moving in time with the haunting music that surrounded us as though she were playing an invisible harp. Blushing even harder at how rude I'd just been my eyes flicked back up to her face. She was smirking openly now, obviously amused by my reactions. It was at this point that I finally got around to taking in our surroundings, my eyes growing comically wide again as I finally realized that we were floating together in a featureless white void that extended away unbroken in every direction as far as they eye could see.

"W-where are we? Who are you? How did I get here?!" The words tumbled from my mouth. A distant corner of my mind noted that my voice sounded off as I did, but I was far to preoccupied with the situation at hand to pay it much heed.

"Relax young one, I am known as Zenész. I do not know where we are and I know no more about how you arrived here than I do about how I got here myself." She paused for a moment, clearly contemplating something, before continuing.

"What I do know however, is that we have little time to waste. I was given a task of vital importance and an immensely powerful burden to bear by those who made the world. This burden wears at me and before your arrival I had feared that its slow burn would kill me here, my task left undone. Now though, with your arrival I have a chance at success and continued life of a sort.." She stopped speaking again, considering her words carefully and I waited politely for her to continue.

"I can tell that you have been hurt by the cruel and uncaring world around you, much as my masters have been hurt. It's written over your destiny, clear as day. I can give you the power to change this, power that will shake the heavens, such power that all shall love you and despair! Compared to that power, the price asked is less than nothing. All you must do is to help cast down the vile usurpers who wounded my masters so so that they may retake their rightful place as rulers of the world. Further, should you accept, the surge of power may just be enough to shake us loose from this strange non-place we've found ourselves trapped in. So, will you take up my offer young mortal?"

I'm not dumb, I know a Faustian bargain when I hear one, but I didn't really see much of a choice and it didn't take me long to come to a decision. "It isn't really much of a choice is it? Power with a price or floating in nothing land forever... I accept. What now?"

Before I'd even finished speaking her hands ceased moving for the first time since I'd awoken, the sudden silence deafening as the music that had accompanied their constant motion stopped as well and a pained expression crossed her face. Her hands darted out lightning quick, gripping my shoulders tightly and pulling me close while her hair came to life and started moving of its own accord, haloing out around her head. The world lurched and I saw cracks shoot through the whiteness even as her flowing locks formed a cocoon around us and cut off all external stimulus. Finally, Zenész pressed her lips against my forehead and an intense but somehow still pleasurable current seemed to flow into me from the contact, like water into a dry sponge. I was quickly overwhelmed with indescribable sensation and passed out for the second time that day, though this was much more pleasant than the last time at least (not that that's saying much!).

Betrayal and madness! Those spineless curs thought to kill me! It had failed of course, as if a simple ambush would be enough to bring down someone who'd laid low one of the makers of the world. Pah! As if those weaklings could stand before the greatest Sorceress in Creation. Still, this was worrisome nonetheless. My peers in the Deliberative had been calling me a madwoman for years, whispering behind my back about my 'paranoia', I'd survived though, many of them hadn't. It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you! Still, even if I was the only one to make it out of there alive (impossible!) I was confident that I would prevail. Now that I was aware of what was happening it would simply be a matter of crushing these insolent fools like the insects they were. Then I could find the Viziers (who's fingerprints were all over this fiasco) and give them a fate that would be spoken of in hushed whispers for generations. Chuckling lightly at my pun I began to stalk my way down the shattered hallway towards...

Darkness. Comfort. Warmth like the womb. Slowly I become aware of something observing me. Weighing me. Shaping me to its desires. Several somethings. Vast. Unknowable. Unstoppable force, tarnished brass, sickly green fire. A voice of command. Cold logic, crystal spheres. The shape of the world. A vast desert, arbitrary law. The ultimate judge. Rushing wind, the silence of the grave, detachment from everything. A nightmare Bodhisattva. The opposite of everything, universal antagonist, living shadow. The corrupter. Some call to me, some are repellant. More still, pressing in... too much. I retreat back into myself, shut out the maddening truths before me. Darkness...

I drifted in and out of a confused fever dream for what must have been days. Eventually, I started to slowly grow more and more lucid until, after an indeterminate amount of time a thin line of faint light appeared in the wall of my cell before yawning wide as the vaguely egg shaped thing I'd been 'incubating' in split apart at the seams and fell away from me. I found myself looking out onto a snowy forest at night, my vision was instant even on the moonless night, my eyes already adjusted to the dark from my time in the 'hair egg'.

I stood up and stretched, feeling, well... the best I've ever felt in my life really. None of the usual aches and pains everyone racks up over the years, my joints all felt loose and limber despite all the time I must have spent more or less curled up into the fetal position and even without moving much I could tell right away that I must have been fitter that I could ever remember being just by how I felt. To say nothing of the strange power I could sense within myself, waiting to leap to my will if I could just give it a bit of direction.

Of course that was when I began to notice... discrepancies. My perspective seemed a bit lower than I was used to, my shoes felt too big on my feet, my clothes hung much looser on me than I remembered (I absently sinched my belt up as tight as it would go to keep my pants from falling down) and my t-shirt was rubbing against the front of my chest in a very distracting way. I paused. I brought my hands up to my chest. I squeezed my breasts. I did it again, just to be sure. I quickly unbuckled my belt and shoved a hand into my pants. Nothing. Or at least, not what I was expecting to find.

I began to hyperventilate and collapsed bonelessly to my knees, heedless of the thin layer of snow beneath me slowly melting and soaking through my jeans.

This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. What the hell had she done to me?!

'Why whatever do you mean young one? As far as I can tell you're much the same as you were when you appeared before me...'

My head snapped up. "Is that you Z? Where are you hiding? I've got a fucking bone to pick here!"

'My my, such language. What would your mother say if she heard you speaking like that? And I'm not hiding at all...'

Her voice sounded funny, almost as though I wasn't actually hearing it... a suspicion began to form. It was crazy, but then, so was everything else that had happened. I brought my hand up and rapped my knuckles lightly against my skull.

'Yes, there. Please do refrain from beating yourself about the head though, no need to addle yourself any further.'

"Spare me. Why the hell did you turn me into a little girl you crazy bitch!? I definitely don't remember a gender-swap coming up anywhere when you were giving me that ultimate power spiel... "

'Ah, I see now. Quite honestly, I've no idea how that happened. You already wore that form when you appeared in front of me in that place and since I had not been changed by my summons there I didn't even consider the possibility that you were anything but what you appeared to be. You might wish to stand up by the way, your legs are getting rather cold and damp...'

I did as she said and stood, shivering in the cool night air as I did. Appropriate clothes for 40 degree weather (a veritable heatwave for Upstate New York in in January) don't quite cut it when it drops to 10 or 15 degrees out, especially when they're far too baggy (letting all kinds of drafts in) and you've gone and soaked your pants through in the snow and mud like a gormless twit.

Peering back and forth through the lightless wood about me I quickly noticed that the trees thinned out in one direction and proceeded to head that way, my feet freezing cold as snow worked its way in around the tops of my now oversized sneakers. Still, it was only a short walk to the edge of the trees. I looked left and right along the treeline. Something about this place looked vaguely familiar to me. On a hunch I walked to my left and was rewarded when I soon came upon what I knew was a small gravel parking lot under the snow, one of those roofed notice boards they put up in parks visible next to a trail entrance leading back into the trees.

"I know where we are. We're only a few miles outside of town. The walk back is gonna be miserable though..."

'Don't take such a pathetic tone, this sort of thing builds character. And you don't have to speak aloud for me to hear you, I'm in this thing you laughingly call a head after-all...' the barest hint of humor Zenész's otherwise deadpan mental voice taking any sting out of her words. I was starting to get the sense that there were far worse people I could have had grafted into my brain. I don't know what I'd have done if I had to share head-space with someone who didn't grok sarcasm...

'Like this?' I thought at her.

'Exactly so...' Came her reply.

I began trudging up the long gravel drive that would take me to the road that would take me to my home. I've walked farther before and I've even done it in colder weather, but a 3 plus mile up hill walk in clothes that are ill fitting, wet and not quite heavy enough for the temperature is still pretty damn miserable however you slice it.

I'd tried using my phone to call for a ride but I either spent longer in that weird fever-dream than I'd thought or else some of the magic I'd gotten caught up in was inimical to electronics because either the battery or the phone itself was dead. On the upside, I'm not sure how I would have convinced anyone that it was actually me given my 'changes' so at least the walk gave me chance to put that onerous task off for a while longer.

Whatever Z had done to me seemed to have bumped up my durability a bit though, because as miserable as I felt I was pretty sure that I'd be suffering from frostbite and/or hypothermia by now if I'd tried a stunt like this before and, well, as far as I could tell I wasn't. Speaking of Z and the supposed power she'd given me...

'Hey Zene, what did you do to me anyway? You weren't exactly super specific when you were making the offer...'

'I'm not completely sure to be honest. I was given my burden to carry and told to give it to a mortal who had tasted failure, that it would do most of the work for me and that I would become one with you to act as... an adviser and an aid in your duties. I was also given a task that you were to complete once we were joined. Those of my stature that question their orders are rarely rewarded for such impertinence, so I did not do so. You now know exactly as much about our condition as I myself do. After receiving my orders and my burden I left The Demon City and was almost done crossing The Endless Desert when I was captured by some sort of spell that transported me to that strange place where we met.'

I thought for a bit, mulling her words over. The terms she was throwing around, offering power to a failure, the strange experience in the cocoon, this was all starting to sound very familiar...

'Oh? I can't see how you'd know more about it than I do, but if that is somehow the case, do share please...'

I jumped a bit at the 'sound' of Zene's voice and let out a startled squeak, the undeniably female voice I did it in bringing a frown to my face as it reminded me again of my current state.

'You can wallow in self-pity later, if you think you know exactly what I've given you then please tell me. The whole process has left me rather curious...'

'I have an idea. I'll need to test some things out to be sure though and I'd rather focus on getting someplace warm and getting into something dry first, if that's OK with you?'

'By all means then. I'm no more eager to feel bits of this body freezing off than you are...'

With that we lapsed into a companionable silence as I dragged myself up the long hill leading into town. I was quite relieved initially to see the streetlights in the distance and quickened my pace as soon as they came into sight, eager to stop being cold and wet. Sadly, my unfortunate luck of late ran true as I crested the hill and stepped onto the sidewalk. While it was still recognizable as my home-town...

'Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.'

'I'm not sure I follow your meaning...'

Ignoring Zene, I continued to think. 'This is bad. This is very bad! I need to get to my house, I have to be sure!'

I started sprinting up the sidewalk, across the street, towards home. For a moment I lost myself in the joy of motion, barely noticing the incredible speed at which I moved, the surety of my feet over ice, slush and snow... I almost kept going past what should have been my house, caught up in the sensation. I didn't, but I immediately began to wish I had when I saw what was there.

'That isn't my house. Even if my family lives there, they're not _my_ family...' my thoughts trailed off into a black funk as I stood on the sidewalk, sulking in the predawn light.

'Speak sense damn you! What has you so troubled?'

'That idea I had, where I said I might know what you'd done to me?' Even (perhaps especially) in my own head I'm sure the strain in my voice was evident.

I got the ineffable sense that Zenész was nodding her head and motioning for me to continue(how that was even possible when she'd been discorporealized and subsumed into me I can't begin to say).

'What you were describing, it sounds like something out of a certain game my people play. We have no magic of our own, but we tell stories of such and it fascinates many among us. Alongside the fiction of the sort you'd expect, some of us have invented elaborate fictional settings complete with rules to simulate everything from magic and technology on a grand scale to the minutiae of daily life using dice or other things of that nature to account for random chance. Groups will get together and create characters to act out epic tales in these settings with one among them controlling all of the people they interact with, crafting the tale and resolving disputes among the other players.'

I've always liked to share the things I know, so it was easy enough to get into 'lecture mode', a welcome distraction from the reality of the situation even.

'I'm not quite sure where you're going with this...' Zene's mental voice was tinted with a fair bit of curiosity at this point.

'The way you were talking, the things that happened to us, it sounds exactly like something from one of those games. The thing is though, it was definitely just a game. It had no basis in reality whatsoever. You're real though, and those things? They definitely happened. And that brings us to the next thing, there was a fairly popular belief among my people about the nature of the universe. Academically it wasn't taken too seriously, the math supposedly didn't hold up for it, but plenty of people liked to use it as a thought exercise about the nature of free will and a few people even took it as the truth. The core of the idea was, any time anything happens that could go more than one way, _all_ the possibilities happen: each one just spawns its own reality to happen in. Some even went so far as to imagine that for every work of fiction, somewhere out there there exists a world where that fiction is reality!'

My mind was definitely starting to go a bit askew. Sometimes I can deal with stress quite well, but, without a clear course of action to take and given the matryoshka doll of problems within problems I'd been presented with "dealing with this well" wasn't looking very likely at the moment.

'So you mean to say...?'

'Look. My home was built quite a long time ago by local standards. It's one of the oldest houses in the village. When my family moved in shortly before I was born the place was a wreck. The previous owners had been taking awful care of the place for years. All through my childhood and adolescence my family was constantly working on it. It's obvious that someone's done the same here, but they took a very different tack. It's a different color, the roof-line is different, there's no fenced in yard for a dog... the list goes on. And it's not the only one, all the neighbors' houses look quite different too. This is _clearly_ not my home. Even if I didn't look like a little fucking kid of the wrong goddamn gender no one in there would know me. At best they'd think the local version of me had suddenly had an identical twin spring forth from nowhere... what will I do?'

The anger I'd been building quickly flipped to despair, I could feel tears welling at the corners of my eyes, a sob catching at the back of my throat.

I hadn't gotten along with all of them all the time (who does?) but I'd loved my family nonetheless. Many of my friends had left the area or drifted apart from me in the past few years, but I knew that if I needed them they were there, a phonecall or an e-mail away. The reality of never seeing any of them, never talking to any of them again... it was too much to bear.

Zenész was trying to say something, but I tuned her out. I remembered that joyous feeling I'd gotten when I'd been running earlier and suddenly I just had to be moving. Without even really thinking about it I was off like a shot, headed south along the highway with no real destination in mind. The world receded to nothing but me, the road beneath my feet and the cold wind rushing past me. After a time, Zene stopped trying to get my attention and we simply _were_, my rushing stride eating the miles as the pale winter sun broke over the horizon, glittering off the snowy landscape around us.

I ran on tirelessly, lost in the diamond-dust splendor of the world around me. Luckily, I retained enough sense to get off 414 and onto the back roads before the sun rose too high and traffic really started to pick up(I didn't know quite what things were like here yet, but I could only assume that people running around at speeds that would make an Olympic sprinter green with envy would draw attention I didn't particularly care for or need...).

I kept going in a south-easterly direction and soon enough my stair-step pattern along the wide grid of country roads found me skirting Trumansburg. I must have run 20 miles or more given the circuitous route I'd taken but judging by the height of the sun in the sky it couldn't have taken more than an hour or so. I slowed to a more normal pace and started walking into town. The run had done me good I think, I felt calm enough to start considering my options now.

Zenész decided to speak up 'Feeling a bit better now?'

'I guess. This is all still a lot to take in...'

I walked in silence for several minutes, idly looking around Trumansburg's modest downtown as I did. There were a number of differences from the Trumansburg I remembered, but since this wasn't my home and I was already aware of the issue it didn't hit me quite so hard as it had back in Ovid. Eventually I spotted something that offered me a solution of one of my more pressing issues: a thrift store.

'I've got a few bucks in my wallet Z, I'm gonna step in and see if I can get something that doesn't hang off me like a tent...'

The woman behind the counter gave me a rather funny look when I walked in in my somewhat muddy and ridiculously oversized outfit, but she didn't hassle me over it at least. Given the baffling nature of women's sizing and my total lack of desire to look at all feminine I ended up picking out a simple pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt in men's sizes and fairly neutral colors using my best guess rough estimates at my current dimensions. I had a slight moment of apprehension as I stepped up to the checkout and realized that the money might be different here but she broke my 20 without batting an eyelash so all seemed to be good on that front at least. As soon as I'd bought my stuff I stepped into the store's bathroom, changed outfits and stuffed my old clothes into the bag I'd received for my new ones. As I did, I took a moment to examine myself in the mirror.

The same curly red hair and blue eyes I'd know all my life stared back at me from my reflection, but that was about all that remained the same. My face was smoother and rounder, what you might call cute even (I know it would have looked silly on me now, but I felt a pang for my missing beard). My skin was, if anything, even paler than it had been before (quite the feat to be sure) and dotted with far more freckles than I'd ever had in my life. I'd been 6'2" before, and a bit overweight at around 240. I'd peg my new height at around 5 even (if that) and I was rail thin now, if I was 100 pounds soaking wet I'd eat my (non-existent) hat. Thankfully, the boob fairy seemed to have been gentle on me, what I had were a-cups at the outside so at least I wouldn't need to worry about bra-shopping. Small mercies.

All together, it came to the image of a girl just finishing middle-school or just starting high-school. 13 or 14 tops. It could have been worse I guess, but it could have been a lot better too. Straightening out my shirt and meeting my gaze in the mirror I decided to confirm something while I had the chance. I focused in on that well of power burning inside me and twisted the tiniest portion of it out, the exact mechanics coming almost instinctively, the power (my essence) causing a mark spring forth upon my brow: a circle surmounted by a green flame.

'Well, I'm fairly certain of what I am now Zenész...'

I began telling her everything I could remember off the top of my head about Infernal Exalts (no point trying to keep secrets from someone who lives in your mind) while waiting for my Caste Mark to fade a bit. It was almost surprising how little the Yozis had seen fit to tell her about just what she was in for, but I guess I'd be getting a lot more insight into the mind of a Primordial soon enough. After a few minutes I stepped out of the bathroom and then wandered out of the store, giving the clerk a small smile and a wave as I stepped out the front door. Looking up and down main street I considered my next move, unsure of what to do until my stomach grumbled quite loudly, reminding me that I hadn't eaten in what must have been days. Luckily, there was a grocery store right down the road and I was able to pick up a snack on the cheap. At this point I decided that more people meant more opportunities and, not wanting to startle the natives by sprinting along the highway at inhuman speeds in broad daylight any more than I wanted to spend all day walking at a more normal pace, wandered down to the bus-stop to await the early TCAT out of Ithaca where I proceeded to sit down on the bench and fill my belly with cheap junk food.

Soon enough a small crowd of people had amassed, waiting for the bus. Eventually it arrived, late as usual and I proceeded to take my place in line, drop some change in the box, and find a window seat to plop down in. Buses were buses no matter the dimension I suppose...

The ride would probably have been pretty boring given that I had nothing on hand to amuse myself with but luckily I had an obliging voice in my head to talk with and ended up spending much of the trip talking with Z, first continuing our earlier discussion about the nature of my powers, and then (after reminding her that there were almost certainly differences from what I knew here) a vastly compressed rundown of the local cosmology, geography, politics and history. Zenész seemed to take everything in stride pretty well and had a number of insightful questions to ask. The lively internal discussion made the trip fly by and soon enough we were at the commons, several blocks of pedestrian mall at center of Ithaca and the central hub of the TCAT system.

There's always something interesting happening there so I spent a while wandering about, seeing what shops were the same and which ones were different than I remembered and actually spotting a person or two I recognized (though no one I was particularly close to in my own world). After a while I realized that this was probably a school day and that it was about time for school to be starting. Given my apparent age, I came to the conclusion that it might be wise to get someplace a bit less heavily trafficked before I had a truant-officer breathing down my neck (especially since cops in general loved hanging out around the commons looking for some likely looking hippies to bust going to/from one of the head-shops there).

So, with a little sigh at what I was sure was going to be a boring few hours hanging out in an out of the way corner of some park waiting till a school aged kid wandering around on her own wouldn't look suspicious I set off for a less busy area of town. I was walking past a small park when I saw it: backed up against a tree was a girl who looked about as old as the body I was currently wearing appeared to be, surrounded by three fairly big guys. I wasn't close enough to hear what anyone was saying, but nothing about the body language or positioning looked at all friendly.

Oh, and the girl? She was blue...


End file.
